Former Google diversity officer Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe promised the Tower Hamlets council "the first women's museum in the UK" if they would approve a zoning change that let him add three storeys and an extra floor, but what he built was a Jack the Ripper "museum."
The planning application promised a museum called "The Museum of Women's History," which featuring suffragettes and equal pay campaigners, to "retell the story of the East End through the eyes, voices, experiences and actions" of women.
Now it features sensationalistic rubbish about a mad serial killer who preyed on prostitutes. As the father of a young girl born in this part of London, I'm pretty sure that these are not the same thing, nor do they serve the same purpose.
Mr Palmer-Edgecumbe said: "We did plan to do a museum about social history of women but as the project developed we decided a more interesting angle was from the perspective of the victims of Jack the Ripper.
"It is absolutely not celebrating the crime of Jack the Ripper but looking at why and how the women got in that situation in the first place."
Tower Hamlets council said: "Ultimately the council has no control in planning terms of the nature of the museum … The council is investigating the extent to which unauthorised works may have been carried out."
Cable Street museum which promised to celebrate East End women now devoted to Jack the Ripper
[Tom Brooks-Pollock and Jonathan Prynn/Evening Standard"
(via Skepchick)
